(Yicai) May 24 -- Shares of Highbroad Advanced Material soared after the Chinese maker of optoelectronic display thin film devices said it will join hands with MinerVa Semiconductor to build a CNY500 million (USD69 million) plant to assemble artificial intelligence servers to tap into the hot AI trend.

Highbroad [SHE: 301321] surged as much as 11.3 percent earlier today, but was gradually dragged down by general market, the stock closed just 0.14 percent higher at CNY14.13 (USD1.95) in Shenzhen today, Shenzhen’s ChiNext market Index, where the stock is traded closed down 1.81 percent today.

A subsidiary of the supplier of semiconductor display panel backlight modules will spend CNY260 million to have 52 percent of the joint venture's equity while a Nanjing unit of the Calgary-based firm will hold the remainder, the Hefei-headquartered company announced yesterday.

The plant will assemble and sell general-purpose and AI servers, the firm said, without disclosing the planned capacity or construction schedule.

MinerVa is a developer of semiconductor chips, according to its website. Its team consists of experts in application-specific integrated circuits, field-programmable gate arrays, graphics processing units, and AI algorithms.

Products of the upcoming factory will mainly be used to meet market demand coming from industries such as Big Data, large language models, Internet of Things, AI, and machine learning, the Chinese firm said, adding that the project is expected to spur new growth opportunities.

Editor: Emmi Laine